Meeting of the Parliament 08 December 2016
Yes, I can. The strategy will be worked through with disabled people and people who care for children with disabilities. It will include all such children, because we are talking about the rights of all disabled people and young people.
We know that we need to align learning and skills better, so we will look to promote the Project Search model; to introduce our own voluntary and person-led pre-employment support programme; to deliver on the specific improvement targets to make our modern apprenticeship programmes genuinely accessible to disabled people, including through part-time and flexible engagement; and, with immediate effect, to provide young disabled people with the highest level of modern apprenticeship funding until the age of 30.
To help employers to see the employee’s potential rather than the barrier, we will actively promote the Department for Work and Pensions access to work scheme and, from next year, providers of our devolved employment services will be required to ensure that disabled people are supported to claim and receive the access to work money so that they can sustain employment.
Disabled people’s organisations tell us that barriers to getting the first opportunity to work can affect future work and life chances. I hope that the new work experience pilot for young disabled people, together with the 120-place internship programme across the public and third sectors, show our intention to make a real difference in removing the barriers to employment that many young disabled people face. We need all that in place in order to transform the employment opportunities that are open to disabled people. We want at least to halve the employment gap between disabled people and the rest of the working-age population in Scotland. We will consult on setting a clear target for employment levels in the public sector, in which only just under 12 per cent of employees are disabled.
Disabled people have as much creativity and enterprise as anyone else and as many good ideas and business brains. Therefore, we will stimulate more pre-start activity for social enterprise and provide support for the set-up of micro and social enterprises.
In transport, the new accessible travel framework, which was developed with disabled people and transport providers, includes a number of specific steps to make public transport more accessible and, importantly, to involve disabled people in key areas of decision making.
Disabled people should be supported—in or out of work. Our approach to social security is to build a rights-based system that is founded on dignity, fairness and respect. That is in stark contrast to the UK Government, whose welfare so-called reforms and abolition of the independent living fund have already been internationally judged as delivering “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights.
Housing has been described as the cornerstone of independent living, but many houses are not designed or built to be homes for disabled people. Working with disabled people, local authorities and other housing providers, we will ensure that each local authority sets within its local housing strategy a realistic target for the delivery of wheelchair-accessible housing across all tenures. We will take a number of other steps to improve housing for disabled people, including carrying out research into creating tailor-made wheelchair-accessible mass-market homes, and producing new guidance on timescales for installing adaptations.
Stigma and discrimination continue to blight the lives of disabled people, so we agree with those who have called for a publicity campaign to tackle negative attitudes. I am pleased to confirm that we will do that next year as part of the one Scotland campaign. One measure of how far we have come will be when disabled people are fairly represented in public life among our leaders and our elected politicians. Earlier this year, I announced the access to elected office fund to provide support for the 2017 local government elections. I am pleased that we will maintain that fund for those who want to stand in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections.
Our shared goal is nothing less than for all disabled people to have choice, control, dignity and freedom to live the life they choose, with the support that they need to do so. The reason is simple: equal rights for disabled people are about human rights, and none of us can enjoy our human rights when even one of us does not. I commend “A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People” to the Parliament and ask members throughout the chamber to join us in committing Scotland’s Parliament to giving full effect to the rights of all disabled people. As Dr Sally Witcher, chief executive of Inclusion Scotland, has said:
“the challenge now is to transform ambitions into actions that will, in turn, transform disabled people’s lives and the country we live in. There is much to be done and no time to lose.”
I move,
That the Parliament recognises the importance of the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities in drawing attention to the human rights of disabled people around the world; acknowledges that there is a need for a transformational change to achieve disability equality and therefore welcomes the publication of the report, A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: Our Delivery Plan to 2021 for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; expresses its thanks to all the individuals and organisations who responded and contributed to the consultation on this plan and agrees that the Scottish Government should continue to engage with disabled people as the experts in the continued actions that need to be taken to ensure that rights and independent living can be enjoyed and that as a society the long-term ambitions set out in the plan can be achieved; agrees that the Scottish Government should be firmly committed to implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in full so that disabled people in Scotland can realise all of their human rights, and condemns the actions and welfare cuts of the UK Government, which have led the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to conclude that there have been “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s human rights.
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